Having spent six years learning about product development, I get to apply this acquired knowledge daily to products
in the energy sector at Schlumberger. Working in a large organization and in a diverse team in the
New Product Development division keeps me engaged in the learning loop every day. The major differences
in the products that I have worked on in the past to the present ones are the physical scale and the
extreme operating conditions.

Design

"The word design is everything and nothing. The design and the product itself are inseparable."— Jonathan Ive

Developing a product from start to finish is always an experience to cherish. I see each of the
processes involved in development, such as identifying the need for the product, brainstorming
ideas for solution, prototyping, testing, building the product and then testing again as a
design challenge. These challenges make this field very exciting.

Robotics

Dismantling various products around the house with the help of my elder brother was a
favorite pastime of mine during childhood. Slowly, this activity transformed into
re-assembling of the dismantled components to create working products (the term I
would use for this today would be reverse engineering). Later in my sophomore year at
college, I built a couple of manually controlled robots, a stair climber and a robotic
arm for competitions. In those competitions, I was thrilled to see automated bots in other
events and found the idea of automation fascinating. I started learning about autonomous
bots and built a line following hovercraft for a subsequent competition. It performed well,
and that inspired me to learn more. At Stanford, I expanded my knowledge by studying about
Artificial Intelligence and how it can be applied not only to robots but also to various
other fields.